Hadid - Complete Works 1979-2013By Philip Jodidio

Iraqi-born Zaha
Hadid ranks among today's most controversial architects. Not only
is she one of the few women who have managed to make their mark in
the notoriously male-dominated field of architecture; she has also
fought incessantly to legitimize the practice of parametric design
in practice. In this updated Taschen monograph, the entire body of
work of one of today's most daring and steadily surprising
architects is very comprehensively
presented.

The
book's foreword, a short but insightful essay by Philip Jodidio,
the book's editor, neatly summarizes Hadid's three-and-a-half
decade-long career while highlighting key projects featured in the
book. Jodidio further details moments of particular significance to
Hadid - firstly, and perhaps most importantly, the seminal 1988
MoMA exhibition titled "Deconstructivist Architecture". Hadid
herself recounts that the exhibition - in which her work was on
display along with like-minded avant-garde experimentalists such as
Libeskind, Koolhaas and Gehry - marked a decisive moment, where
non-normative architecture started to break away from purely
theoretical discourse.

As was
also the case with most of her fellow deconstructivists, Hadid had
spent the first considerable period of her career winning
intellectual acclaim but very few actual commissions. Her designs,
although admired for their boldness, were mostly believed to be
unviable. However, with the technological breakthroughs in computer
programming, in particular parametric design, she was now able to
translate her signature free-flow style into realizable
form.

A Dream of Pure Form Disturbed

As for
all of Taschen's monographs, the chapters of this book follow a
strict chronology, starting with Hadid's earliest projects and
ending with the ones currently under construction. The formative
years of most illustrious architects are a curiosity at best. When
it comes to Zaha Hadid, however, they are an indispensable
testament to the clarity of her vision.

The
most striking aspect of every one of Hadid's projects is that while
they differ in terms of scale, function, and geographic location,
they are always instantly recognizable. As jury chairman Jacob
Rothschild observed on the occasion of Hadid being honored as the
first female Pritzker Prize recipient: "No project of hers is like
the one before, but the defining characteristics remain
consistent."

Hadid
has embraced the possibilities the new tools of the digital age,
probably more wholeheartedly than any other architect. However,
when examining her early, carefully layered paintings and drawings,
shown in the first part of the book, it appears that Hadid worked
computationally before the tools to do so were developed. One might
even think that she anticipated their eventual creation. In any
case, it should put an end to any attempt at reducing her work to
mere hi-tech fetishism.

One
thing stands abundantly clear when presented with the full scope of
Hadid's work: she has always been - and continues to be -
explorative and inquisitive in a way few established architects
dare to be. More than a quarter of a century later, she still seems
equally committed in her pursuit of what Mark Wigley in the
catalogue of the aforementioned MoMA exhibition called "a dream of
pure form that has been disturbed".